ERIKA DE BEER, Pretoria | Monday
A SECOND rugby player on trial for the murder of Tshepo Matloha has apologised to the Northern Province teenager’s parents for throwing his body into a dam.
”What we did was not right,” Kobus Joubert told the Pretoria High Court on Monday.
”I got quite a fright. I’ve never been in such a position before.”
His co-accused, Riaan Botha, last week tendered a similar apology.
However, Joubert insisted that he had done nothing wrong besides throwing the body into the Arabie Dam, since renamed Flag Boshielo Dam.
He was with Botha and nine other members of the Noordelikes rugby club on Botha’s mother’s farm near Dendron for a weekend, when the group went for a game drive on March 25 last year.
Joubert said he did not see any dogs or people until Botha apprehended a person who later turned out to be Matloha.
Botha had pressed the butt of his rifle against Matloha and stomped on him, Joubert testified.
He said he was seriously under the influence of alcohol that day, having drunk a lot the previous night and sleeping little. He had also drunk on the Sunday morning.
The afternoon after the incident Joubert, co-accused Ben Korff, state witness Louis Strydom, and Jaco Hartslief one of the four against whom all charges were earlier withdrawn drove to Dendron to buy more beer.
The following day, Botha phoned him and they met at a train bridge in Pietersburg, Joubert said.
There, Botha told him that Matloha was still where the group had left him the previous day.
”He said I knew what would happen if somebody found out about that,” he told the court.
The two of them went to the farm where they found Matloha dead.
They wrapped him in a tarpaulin, put his body on a bakkie, and threw another tarpaulin over him. Along their way, they gathered wood on the farm, which they piled on top.
”That was in case we were stopped at a road block. It would seem as if we had loaded some wood.”
They fetched a boat and a heavy pole from Botha’s smallholding, south of Pietersburg, which they used to throw the body into the dam, Joubert said.
The trial entered its fourth week on Monday.
Last week, Botha testified he had caught Matloha poaching, but denied having assaulted him as claimed by some of his co-accused.
Botha, Joubert, Korff, Francois Velloen and Corne Kloppers are charged with Matloha’s murder and the attempted murder of his friends Alex and Melford Motlokwana.
A charge of defeating the ends of justice against Botha and Joubert pertains to Matloha’s body being thrown into the dam.
Botha also faces a count of malicious damage to property for the shooting of five dogs. – Sapa